Steam Deck 32GB RAM Upgrade
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- čas přidán 24. 10. 2023
- In this video, I upgrade the system memory of a Steam Deck from its original 16GB to 32GB. These Steam Decks only ever came from the factory with 16GB, so doubling that to 32GB makes for quite a unique upgrade.
The necessary modded Steam Deck BIOS images can be found here: balika011.hu/deck_32gb/
The Windows BIOS updating utility can be found here: dosdude1.com/files/biosmods/st...
The RAM chips can be purchased here (part number K3LKCKC0BM-MGCP): www.aliexpress.us/item/325680...
For inquiries about performing such upgrades, please visit: doslabelectronics.com/contact
#steamdeck #consolegaming #upgrade - Věda a technologie
I know I said it was LPDDR4 memory in the video, but the Steam Deck does indeed use LPDDR5... I just misremembered it somehow. Sorry for any confusion.
What's the speed of the ram?
@@totallyworksperfectly5424 from steam themselves "16 GB LPDDR5 on-board RAM (5500 MT/s quad 32-bit channels)"
@@totallyworksperfectly5424
K3LKCKC0BM-MGCP
@totallyworksperfectly5424 as long as its ddr5 the speed will be set to the lowest clock speed of the chips, so buy fast ram
So you made the performance WORSE?>?
The best part of this upgrade is that Valve/AMD were smart enough not to put a bunch of tiny 0201 components right beside the RAM chips
Yeah
That, or use a locked boot sector that checks the hash before booting like every other a-hole vendor out there... Steam has a monopoly for a reason... They actually care about gaming. 😊
@doublewhopper67 they functionally do have a monopoly. It's not only about having no competitors. You can have 10 competitors and still have a monopoly if you have too much market share. Valve has 75% market share of PC games according to enterpriseappstoday.
Steam have said in the past it's your device your all grown ups have fun, and that's why I own a 64gb one with a 2tb upgraded ssd but am definitely thinking a ram upgrade could be an idea as especially in Starfeld ram seems a bit of a bottleneck
Those were the bane of me installing the 2nd m.2 slot in my MSI GL65 Leopard laptop. lol
That’s an awesome upgrade. Side note but when I saw the vista wallpaper and taskbar I almost lost it. I realized later that the settings window gives away that it’s a more recent version but still, what a trick 😅
Haha yeah if only. Just a theme my friend put on there on Windows 11.
the taskboar is called retrobar
I loved the look of vista too. Shame it was hated so much
it got me too dont worry xD
it was a jumpscare tbh
He makes it look so easy.
Heh "this one looks pretty easy"
If I tried I'd end up with a bunch of broken traces, some damaged memory chips, and a dead Stream Deck 😅
@@JeffGeerling You just need to write an Ansible script to do it for you
@@JeffGeerling atleast you can wear a hat and go to dennys.
Because it is
Get gud
Just wanted to say this video was an absolute delight to watch, thank you so much for sharing this with the whole Steam Deck community.
wait till they start putting amd 5700u's into the steam deck that will be a hell of a thing to see then🤣
I'm one of this fellow's Steam Deck 32 GB upgrade customers. Works great. Good communications. Fast turnaround. Don't be afraid!
Thanks for the upgrade.
How's gaming what games you played? Helldivers 2 what's the fps your getting
I heard something about if you upgrade the ram to 32 gb you’ll have to recode something every time the BIOS needs updating? Is this true what’s up with that?
I heard something about if you upgrade the ram to 32 gb you’ll have to recode something every time the BIOS needs updating? Is this true what’s up with that?
Just want to say that , this is an impressive trade that you do! I used to cadweld various larger gauge wires onto steal pipelines for DC voltage measurements for corrosion control. We would use thermite to basicallly sodder onto pipelines... Now I splace fiber optic cables which is fusion welding glass. This procedure and knowledge most people that aren't aware but you explained why you did all your steps as a knowledable teacher would, a great tutorial! I wouldn't buy all the equipment to do this procedure myself but kudos to your trade as this was a flawless proceedure on your half!
Oh my god, the little solder pieces left on the board after wicking were driving me crazy thinking you were gonna leave them there. You can't imagine my relief after seeing it all cleared up when adding the flux to the board. Good content 👍
This kind of upgrade would be great with changing the VRAM usage from 1GB to 4GB as it will have plenty of RAM for the CPU. Will definitely improve any GPU limited games.
If you notice the GPU is set to 2GB (because he only had 30GB available). I believe the driver is in charge of the GPU and can use as much as it wants too. Of course if there is some system files cached in that RAM you might experience 'hitching' as it evicts or swaps. But with 32GB total I don't see much downside to setting it to 8GB for GPU, thats still 10GB more for the 'system' than you had before.
Shouldn't system already use ram when vram is overflowed?
@@AIFT_Staff Kinda, but allocating vram helps with stuttering in certain games, espeially now that some AAA requires 4gb as minimum. An example is COD MW2 (2022) that with 2gb allocated will stutter from times to times, as opposed to the smooth experience with 4gb
@@milescarter7803 in OEM bios you can set up to 4gb for gpu. and it does change windows to show 12gb system 4gb gpu.... because that's how I run my deck when in windows mode. and I do 2gb gpu for steamdeck side when im actually using steamos. usually with laptops when you have more ram, you can set higher gpu allocation in bios.... so setting 8gb would be sick and still have 24gb left for cpu which is more than enought.
the next generation steamdeck should come with 32gb ram, 16gb for cpu and 16gb for gpu. each in quad channel and separated instead of shared.
@@goblinphreak2132quad channel isn’t going to happen for system memory. It’s way too power consuming. Dedicated vram is more likely. But not 16GB. Again too many memory channels for a handheld. 4-6GB @ 128-192 bit controller width of dedicated gddr5 is more than enough for 1080p @ 60.
However you would also need more and faster gpu cores so the increase in count and clock speed is going to eat at the power budget as well. Remember these devices are designed for 10-35w TDP, this is split between cpu cores, the memory controller, pcie, integrated chipset (yes it has one) area, and the gpu die and its associated parts as well.
It will be incremented improvements for a while. But in 5-10 years we will see something special come out of all this
Thanks for using my modified bios. I'm the source of every unofficial Steam Deck bios that's accepted by the updater.
Awesome! Yeah, I was surprised it just worked with the native updating utility like that, awesome work there. Do you have a website or link I can add where you may publish pre-patched later BIOS versions and/or more info?
@@dosdude1and no reply. I feel a troll lurking. This time with pink and orange hair.
Thanks for your work
teach me the ways sensei
Congrats! What an epic video. The tension when running the RAM update thing program was thick, yo. And then it worked!
this is cool, I do a lot of light gaming on my decky but it cool to see people like you out there doing these mods!
Great video, wish you would've done some performance testing, or shown bios/spd settings using cpu-z, or expanding task manager (in your video it wasn't maximized). Also, some pre and post upgrade benchmarks/gameplay testing would've been awesome. Esp if you manually set GPU to 4GB for original, and 8GB for upgraded. Can you please do a follow-up part 2 video?
You made this look effortless, props for the skill.
Its amazing watching a master do his craft. Thank you for this so awesome to see.
Awesome stuff! If I had the equipment I would try it myself. Also quite nice it’s a modified 110 bios version which is the best for overclocking. Unlock it or use smokeless and try increasing the speed from 5200 to 6400 if your Ram chips support it. Which they should. Benchmark before and after would be awesome 👏
this^
Yeah
All I need is a pre-heater, I wonder if I can use my space heater set on the lowest setting!? lol
None of these tools are expensive.
This is not something to try for yourself you will screw up the pcb board with small components falling off. You need soldering experience to do this.
It would be cool of you can run some gaming benchmarks to see if there is a boost in some games when it comes to stability and performance like starfield or cyberpunk 2077.
Performance will be nearly identical. If the new ram is 6400 mhz then there will be about a 5 fps increase over stock
@javiervelez9329 yeah, doesn't seem like it will affect gameplay. Not quite sure what benefit this provides, unless the user intends to do ram intensive tasks like video editing or maybe VM environments?
2nd thought, he appears to using the stock storage.. if that is true, he could stand to gain performance via an NVME upgrade, provided the board can take advantage of the increased speeds?
@@javiervelez9329 I doubt there's a way to change the frequency in the BIOS, and I can practically guarantee it wouldn't automatically overclock the ram either.
@@PauIieWalnuts 2:13 You can literally see an nvme drive in the first clip of the removed board.
I found this so awesome and interesting, thank you so much. I still am blown away by the steam deck every day.
Awesome work man! You always come up witht he coolest and craziest ideas!
So refreshing to watch someone who actually understands how to (re-)flow BGA. Watching some other channels, it's like they use mountains of flux and I always cringe. I used to flow xbox 360 for RROD back when I worked at a repair shop. Fortunately we had a laser rework to make that job a lot easier
Laser what?
Yeah, what is this Laser machine you speak of??
@@michaelrfx7 He probably meant infrared xD
You can never use too much flux ❤
Laser rework? Sounds like you are an expert. 😅
Man i wish i had soldering skills like that, hardware modding like this always looks so cool
If you have PRO tools then it is easy!
@@AppleReviews nope, it isn't! I'm pretty sure most users here would rip at least 10 pads on the first try and maybe succeed in the 5th or so.
Been there, done that! It's a thin line between good bga soldering and missing pads. Also, you have to carefully keep your temperatures and heating times in acceptable areas, otherwise you'll kill something.
@@dolphhandcremeyeah I'd probably go through 20. Plus 2 steamdecks 😂
yea.. but if you make 1 mistake, it could be very costly. so take it from someone who does surface mount soldering like this guy uses, and its not that easy.. even with professional tools. its an art. you can teach anyone to paint, but only an artist can paint effortless and strides for perfection. you may have a hidden talent for it, you never know..
@@dolphhandcremeexactly. been there also, its NOT easy.
This was awesome to see, it's so much higher than my skill level for now, but i'm slowly edging to having the knowledge and ability to do such thing.
Only thing that made me wince was the board being held just by the side, bending quite a bit while you were removing old solder with the wick. I'm sure nothing can go wrong, but just that feeling of it not being fully supported while being heated up, gives me the old Macbook no display due to bent PCB vibes.
This was really interesting. Thanks for sharing. I've been trying to learn more about computers for fun and how to build them.
I always recommend cleaning the flux off the board. Even the “no clean” fluxes can cause issues over the years.
The work space at the start tells me I don't think cleaning up is on the agenda, but the flux left on the board was also not a good look.
Good luck cleaning the flux out from under the BGA... 95% of people don't.
I'm untidy but even I clean flux off a soldered board.
yeah, but benefit of the doubt, maybe he cleaned it off camera?
@@MrBradleyykidd I'd normally agree, but the flux was apparent when the deck was partially reassembled.
I love watching these, I have the ram to try it on my Raspberry pi. But I’m scared I’m gona mess it up! 😅
I do a lot of BGA and SMT reworking/reballing, glad it worked out so well! It can be tricky
NGL that looks relaxing af! What a clean job
Could you possibly do a RSX/GPU upgrade on an original model PlayStation 3?
The original models are prone to GPUs overheating, and I've heard of people swapping over GPUs from Slim or Super Slim models which were made on a newer process node and optimized for better thermals and power efficiency.
i think i'm gonna pickup a second deck and start modding the hell out of it. thanks for the inspiration.
I really appreciate seeing these videos, thank you
it took me a hot second to realize I was watching dosdude1... lol love your macOS patchers!
awesome man! great work! and i LOVE that vista asthetics. always brings me back to the good old times
For sure, Vista looked really good. I still use my collection of Longhorn wallpapers after all these years too.😊
The amount of screws and bits all over the work mat give me crazy anxiety. Awesome video and explanation for this project though!!
You are one of the most talented engineers on YT I've ever seen. Thank you for sharing all this!
Totally awesome respect that you and other folks that knows how to do this. :)
I'd like to know how the owner skinned their Windows 11 to look like Vista 👀 I always loved the "Aero" look of Vista and 7.
same
Winaero. It's a a comprehensive windows modifier and has the aero options, as well as windows 8. I use it to tweak windows overall. Disable telemetry, disable edge, updates, etc.
@@bubbablake3983 winearo only enbales the aero basic theme and has a lot of advanced system options that not everyone needs to be playing with.
Start11
Love that mod! So simple 🤩
Really curious about performance change if any
🤣🤣😂😂
simple
Prime example of how simple doesn't always mean easy.
@@cavemaneca well from a soldering perspective it really is simple and actually quite easy if you have some experience. normally there are tons of tiny parts beneath the bigger chips, the steam deck is actually really well designed for such tasks.
@@cavemaneca simple and easy are both relative.
dosdude1!! You helped me fix my 2011 Macbook with a fried GPU. Thank you so much you are a legend!
very good and cool video, keep going i really like your setup and Knowledge where you explain soldering
Would love a follow up showing the practical improvements from doing this
It's not difficult to understand. More memory means more wiggle room for games = potentially less stutter. As you gain VRAM there's less need to shift resources as they have the space to just stay.
If you use Windows that means less reason to use memory compression which means you don't lose CPU cycles on it = more performance.
Extra memory helps emulators a lot.
You could also run more applications if you use the Deck as a Desktop.
@@MiGujack3 oh, no shit! And sure theory Always does 100% correlate to reality in practice, right????
Ofc I know the plausible benefits to be gained from the mod, but there remain many factors that may still affect performance and make this not worth it performance wise. The best way to say for sure is to test it in real scenarios and see how it goes.
I use my Steam Deck for coding work in Windows and my applications crash because of a lack of RAM. This seems like an essential upgrade. Only wish you sold your soldering services on Etsy or something. Thanks for the walkthrough.
no one use SD for coding
I don't have a deck and I don't know how to do what you did. I watched the whole video. I enjoyed it so much. Thank you
damn you! this is awesome. would be awesome to see what happens when VRAM allocation is slowly cranked up to 8GB vs the 1GB-4GB allocation for 16GB Steam Deck
Awesome work! Do you know if higher frequency memory chips could be used?
Hey Dosdude, love your mods and discoveries. Is it possible to further modify the deck? Besides storage, and the ram (which is very new to me because I haven't seen anyone else do it) is it possible to further tweak it and make them faster? In addition to that, thermals will be an issue following behind it- maybe a very efficient thermal modification as well?
Haven't seen anything cool like this by other people and their steam decks, besides simple to slightly more difficult upgrades which are all scratching the surface.
With the same soldering skills needed for the ram upgrade, you can upgrade the wifi card as well
Yep, the soldered WiFi module can be upgraded to an Intel AX200-series module for WiFi 6 support, which I actually did on this Steam Deck as well after making this video. Thermals seem OK as they are; upgrading RAM will not affect thermals at all.
i've also seen a heatsink upgrade under the name 'p3r monoblock'.. it replaces the little metal shield over the steamdeck's mainboard as well as the original heatsink
I’ve seen them put in a stronger fan too….dunno if it helps. They never showed it. I just have a case with more grids. That did help abit.
I love that jolly clipart computer on the Insyde Flasher
Beautiful technique, great work! :D
I wonder what the performance changes are like. Would be awesome if you could upload/link someone testing the performance with a before and after, seems very interesting.
Performance would not change if it's the same speeds.
@@BlackUdon Out of curiosity, does the steamdeck not use any kind of page file? Because if it does, this kind of upgrade would definitely improve performance in situations where a lot of applications are open simultaneously, if only because it reduces the need and use of a page file. If the deck doesn't use a page file, then you're correct there would be no significant performance change.
@@ixamraxiIf it's windows of course it has a page file. As for linux there's the swap partition. With this mod you could actually just get rid of it.
@@MiGujack3 That's what I suspected. In which case performance would definitely be better in operating systems like windows or linux running on the deck, but perhaps minimal benefit for the original steam deck OS..
Going from 16 to 32 gb, in a modern gaming setting, you will see small yet significant improvement. It will vary game to game, but for the most part you’re not actually increasing the frame rate, you’re increasing the consistency of the upper percentile of frames… which will increase the frame rate. But not that way.. ya know? I’ve tried 16gb, 32gb, 64gb, and 128gb while gaming using a 13900K. Sure, you can do it on a steam deck, but should you? No. Especially considering this is not a multitasking device. Unless you’re a Linux weirdo and using this as some impromptu desktop solution
This is a neat mod, but requires some good soldering skills unlike most other Deck mods. A good job you're running Windows 11 because I believe some SteamOS updates actually flash the BIOS, which could mean having to regularly reflash the modded BIOS back on if you were running SteamOS.
Yes the bios is reflashed from time to time!
The proper way would be to know how make the bios mods themselves. I know by experience it's not that difficult but you have to be very careful. Constantly flashing a custom bios based on an old build is not a good idea.
this doesnt require good soldering skills.. did you watch the video? heat to remove them, place new ones, reheat to seat them. this is a simple mod as OP stated.
spoken like someone who has never replaced a BGA chip @@XxAtomic646xX
@@XxAtomic646xX If you think this is simple, you have no idea what you're talking about. It's simple for someone with experience yes. Not for new ppl at all.
well done mate, this tutorial done very professional
Damnnnn, Dosdude strikes again with the mods ♥️🤟
Would love to see the performance gains on the steam deck oled that was just announced . Crazy times we live in
Hey dosdude, have you done the Nvidia 3070/Ti 8GB to 16GB VRAM upgrade? that might be a very popular service to sell.
this is awesome man you gotta keep this up
Looking forward to seeing if this can be done on the new OLED models
@dosdude1 - you have the part listed as K3LKBKB0BM-MGCP in your video comment at the time I viewed, but I think you meant to say the part # is K3LKCKC0BM-MGCP. The C version is what you showed in the video (with each chip being 8G, not 4G like the B version) and aligns with others who've done the mod.
Yep you’re right, I pasted the wrong part number. I’ll update that.
@@dosdude1 You rock! This is awesome and absolutely inspired me to try this on my own. Thank you!
I need this.
Great work!
Great work as always
id love to see some benchmarks side by side 16gb vs 32gb
Upgrade was amazing,...Windows on Steamdeck, not so much. I'd like to see that upgrade working on the stock SteamOS with official Bios. Thumbs up for the soldering skills though :)
I would say the same, though there are edge cases, such as playing primarily games that won't work on windows. The games on the deskop here however should work on linux.
Only teamviewer can be problematic, while it does work on linux, it does not work in a flatpak and is incompatible with sandboxing.
Nice job - I would suggest running the steam deck through a capture card in future though, I’ve got a bit of a headache with shakey cam .. and the light reflections! 😊
wow, really nice work, i would love to do this!!
Love your videos so much! And a quick question, shouldn't those chips be LPDDR5? At least on the steam deck website, it seems that way.
Yes, it’s LPDDR5... For some reason I was thinking it was LPDDR4.
Is there any noticable performance difference after the memory upgrade? Kind of curious if its more than just more usable memory space.
I'd imagine any game where you fast travel between the same places a lot, or otherwise need to load/unload/reload the same assets a lot will benefit hugely from keeping them in the RAM cache, especially if running the game off an SD card.
It should also help speed up switching between game and desktop mode.
Nice work, i'll have to try this on mine... Maybe even the legion Go
Beautiful
loved the upgrade
Curious if the ram speeds are the same? (I assume they are)
Excellent work!
Yes. The bios update doesn't change the configured speed of the installed ram, only the capacity.
Hi 👋
In case of upgrade like this, do you need to do a RAM test or you just assume the Memory is fully functional and just move on?
In most, if not all, instances, any RAM issues are apparent immediately.
*Memtest86 for 24hrs* 👍
Always run a memory test in these cases
I’m impressed dude you’re a good man
🎉👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻😉 félicitations, bravo. Maintenant elle va avoir beaucoup plus de performance.
What is the maximum amount of RAM you could install? Could this take 64GB?
Estaria bueno que lo pruebes con el SteamOS para ver el rendimiento en los juegos, como pruebas para ver si el aumento de ram sirve de mejora cuando estamos utilizando su software propio.
English pls
It would be good if you tried it with SteamOS to see the performance in games, as tests to see if the increase in ram serves as an improvement when we are using its own software.@@nekominorinya2569
@nekominorinya2569 It will be nice if you test it with SteamOS to see the performance in gaming, like tests to see if the RAM upgrade actually helps when we are using the stock os
@@nekominorinya2569 - just fucking use google translate. the internet is not supposed to be in English only.
Great video dude
Cool upgrade! Would be great if future steam deck models are able to upgrade ram without soldering though.
sweet upgrade dude. any chance for a return to luke for another upgrade co-op?
I plan on it soon!
Great to hear. And tnx to you i got my gtx 1060 running on Sierra on a Mac pro 3.1 with web drivers, just last week@@dosdude1
so your patcher still serves as purpose :D@@dosdude1
Ever consider doing a PS3 repair? In particular replacing the 65nm GPU (RSX) on an early unit with a 40nm one? I can see this becoming a big deal in the retro community as more of the backwards compatible PS3s die due to bad solder balls inside the GPU. Google frankenstein ps3 for more info.
If theres no shortage caused by that bad solder, theres a chance you can reball the gpu and solder it right back on
@@HydraInk you can not reball the GPU core to the GPU substrate, you can only reball between the substrate and the main board. PS3, XBOX, ATI, etc. GPUs failed in the late 2000's because of these internal balls failing. You can only replace the GPU.
Awesome like always !
impressive work ! Amazing how many balls there are and how close they are and the melted solder does not flow into each other.
That's the magic of flux.
you make it look so easy, it would be sweet if the GPU memory could be allocated to 4gb or more even
As far as I know AMD APU"s have a limit of 2GB Vram for the apu. This would give you 30GB system RAM and 2GB RAM available for the GPU.
czcams.com/users/shortsg88ZjosCfKg
@@MichaelmaertzdorfI once allocated 8GB of ram to a Vega 11, it can be done by modifying bios settings
The VRAM usage is dynamic
@@David-eg6sd it's a fixed value in the bios.
I subscribed. Just because, you are one of the few guys I see reballing (putting bga chips) on using a handheld hot air station. Not a reballing infrared station with cameras and fancy positioning system. And it works. And yes I watch alot of electronic channels. I guess you have some experience / training. I can care less about that console. The technique was brilliant!
The max Ram this apu can handle is 16Gb according to AMD specs. I am curious can you run a Ram benchmark to see if you can really use more that 16Gb of ram?
Awesome stuff! 👍
I can't explain why, but this video screams "2010's ish" tutorials, great video btw!
for better performance would be cool if u could set dedicated memory for apu to 8gb and the rest to cpu
I thought I head the voice somewhere and then I realize it was the dude who made the OSX compatible for older macbooks, dude is amazing
Great video, thanks
Great video!!
nice i wanted to do this but didnt have the bios file now i do thank you very much
Very nice upgrade!
Hello, this is awesome. What temperature did you use to solder the chips back on and how long did you hold the heat gun on them. (it looks like it might be sped up). I'm trying to understand how you know when it's finished.
Great mod! Thanks for sharing!
Great video, thank you!
This is super cool! Do you have any recommendations for how to practice this type of upgrade / what to practice it on without risking an entire steam deck?
Thank you so much 🙏 I'll send my steam deck for the upgrade. Because my Call of Duty struggling and it needs more Ram lol
Great job dude
Nice video, have you got any bench marks showing the improvements.
@dosdude1 theoretically what could be the maximum ram size for the steam deck? Also can you change the ram allocation to take more ram for GPU utilization?
Awesome video. I would love to see a video showing performance before and after the upgrade. Are there any significant gains in performance?
Excellent job.
wow, you made that look so easy !